To a Jornalero Cleaning Out My Neighbor’s Garage

You are nothing like my father.
And like my father
you are nothing.
Zambo. Castizo.
Without draft animals
the Mexica used the wheel
only as a toy.
Please keep off the lawn.
Green mirrors are asleep
beneath the grass.
In graduate school a landlord asked,
Here to pick strawberries?“Y me vine de Hermosillo/
en busca de oro y riqueza.”
Are your hands
always so dirty?
Slip a finger in my mouth.
I’ll devour the grime
under the nail.
Pomegranate, grenade.
Sometimes in order to say a word
it’s necessary
to spit it out. A spic sells seashells
on the seashore. Assonance
is often considered a blemish
by corrido singers.
You walk out with a French horn in your arms
and you’re a butcher
in El Dorado holding
the golden entrails of cattle.

*Poem borrows language from Angela de Hoyos and Américo Paredes.

Eduardo C. Corral is a CantoMundo fellow. He holds degrees from ASU and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and his work has been honored with a Discovery/The Nation award and residencies from The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He previously served as the Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and as the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University. In 2011, he won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition.